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State and Federal Food Ministers from Australia and New Zealand announced on Monday a review of the Health Star Rating System to consider mandatory “added sugar” labelling.

Dr Naveen Somia, President of the Australasian Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (ASAPS) writes that mandatory labelling needs to apply in cosmetic surgery. Mandatory labelling of doctors will safeguard patients from potential harm by being operated on by doctors who have been allowed to parade as surgeons thanks to the use of a fabricated title.

There is strong evidence on the damaging effects on the patient and public health by excessive sugar intake. We applaud the government initiative of mandatory labelling of added sugars to empower consumers to make healthy choices. In cosmetic surgery, there is also compelling evidence that the misleading labelling of a doctor often leads to a disastrous result for an unsuspecting patient.

As evidenced in Channel Nine’s A Current Affairs program on 30 July 2019, which highlighted the negative impact on patients as a result of the use of fabricated titles by a doctor, one of the patients in the story said ‘I would have never agreed to be operated on had I known he wasn’t a Plastic Surgeon’ — thus demonstrating that fabricated titles easily misleads patients.